Uxmal, Yucatan

The cheapest flights are often the cheapest because of the travel time involved. On Wednesday night we flew to Denver, spent the night in the airport, caught a 5am flight to Houston, and from there we caught a 5pm flight to Merida. So, between arriving to the Salt Lake City airport and leaving the Merida airport, we spent 30 hours traveling. Only about 6 of those hours were flying - the other 24 were just hanging around the airport! Oh my gosh. It exhausts me just thinking about it. Airports are not easy to sleep in! But considering we only spent $250 rountrip each for these flights, I’d say it was worth it. Thank goodness the trip home will consist of much less travel time!

Anyway, after a crazy taxi ride where the driver had no idea what he was doing last night, we made it to our amazing Airbnb. This place seriously rocks! We have our own kitchen and bathroom for a quarter of the price of what we paid for just a private room in Europe. Our host met with us to give us keys and chatted with us for a while about the cenote he found and was digging up in his yard. His English is pretty good and we want to be his friend. So let us know if you need a great place to stay in Merida and I can send you a link!

This morning we arose early to catch the bus. Well, first we took an Uber to the station and wow! I had never used Uber before and it is seriously the most convenient thing of my life. I sent out a request and literally 30 seconds later our driver showed up and took us where we needed to go, no cash involved! What a world we live in.

So we made it to the bus station and bought our tickets. I was starving because I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch yesterday. So we hit a nearby Oxxo and got some snacks but had to wait in a huge line! We were running to catch our bus and made it just in time at 9:03. The bus was scheduled to leave at 9:05. Or so we thought. We couldn’t find the bus because apparently it left early. Who does that?! The lady checking our ticket called the driver and was annoyed with him for leaving early and had him turn around and come get us. It took a while for the bus to get back to the station and getting on was kind of awkward because I felt like we had inconvenienced everyone. But it was the driver’s fault so whatever!

About an hour later we made it to Uxmal. Now, I didn’t actually know that Uxmal existed until last semester when we learned about the site in my Art History class. I had learned a lot about it, which made today’s visit exceptionally interesting! But what made it even more special is that we were practically the only ones there. We walked into the site and couldn’t see any other people - just iguanas which were EVERYWHERE. As the day went on there were more people visiting, but there never was a crowd.

The architecture was gorgeous and we actually got to climb on a lot of it. There are some seriously steep stairs on those temples!

I especially loved the “Puuc style” mosaic decorations.

The more we walked around, the hotter we got. Bailey reached “El Salvador” level, which he defines as sweat dripping down his nose. We took a couple of breaks from walking but of course that didn’t really help with the heat. Let’s just say I have never been sweatier in my life!

Overall I LOVED Uxmal. It was so cool to actually see in person all of the things I had learned about in class! Bailey was also blown away by how beautiful it was. Seriously, if you ever visit the Yucatan, consider a trip over to Uxmal. Though it may not be a “Wonder of the World”, it is breathtaking and worth the trip. And you can get pictures without anyone else in them because it’s not very frequented by tourists!

After leaving the ruins, we crossed the street to Choco-Story which is a chocolate museum.

It was all outdoors and we made a loop, passing through the occasional hut to learn about the Mayans, cacao beans, and the relationship between the two. There was also a bloody skeleton in one that taught us about funeral rituals.

We walked through some orchards, learned about some specific plants, attended a chocolate-blessing ceremony, and checked out some spider monkeys, birds, and jaguars. The crocodile seemed to be missing from his habitat, which was concerning.

It was quite the chocolate museum, to say the least! The highlight was definitely the drinking-chocolate making demonstration. The guy spoke English to us and explained how the Mayans used to mix the cacao beans with the blood of the sacrificed for the nobles and priests to drink. To be honest, I am curious as to how that tastes. The stuff he gave us to drink was not mixed with blood, though. It was straight cacao flavor which was super bitter! We mixed sugar in it and then dang. SO GOOD. It was boiling hot and so was our sweat, but you better believe that we drank every drop of that hot chocolate and wanted more. The “museum” was cool and all, but if we went back let’s be honest, it would be for the hot chocolate. 

Our next activity was grabbing a few snacks and then waiting for the bus for a very long time. It shouldn’t have been such a long time, but the bus was kind of on its own schedule I guess! We befriended a cute solo traveler from England and shared fun travel stories with her, so the time passed quickly enough.

Eventually we made it back to Merida, and went to a market for some food. We mostly just found fruit and chaos, though, so we bought some fruit and went in search of street tacos. And good thing we did! These tacos were probably one of the greatest eats of my life.

We also tried some street esquites (a creamy, cheesy corn snack) but she put WAY too much creamy stuff in there so we didn’t dig it.

After another smooth Uber ride, we are now back at our Airbnb and ready to rest up for another day on this beautiful peninsula!